by Julia Bell
When everyone else is gone the kitchen is quiet and calm. Mary and I sit at the table almost too exhausted to move.
‘Will she be OK, do you think?’ I ask.
‘No more or less OK than any of us.’ She rubs a hand across her face and smiles tiredly. ‘It’s not much of a life for you up here. Your poor mother. She . . .’ Mary looks at me thoughtfully. ‘I’m sorry,’ she says. ‘You know I have only ever been trying to keep you safe.’
I nod. ‘What is an unnatural passion?’
Mary flinches, squeezing her eyes together. ‘Nothing for you to worry about, I’m sure.’
‘But . . .’ There’s a question in my mind but I don’t know how to formulate it. About passions and Alex and nature. The words slide around uneasily in my mind. All I know is that I want so much to see her and lie down with her, safe and warm, it’s like an ache. I am going to get away from here and I am going to see the world. The real world, the one that I can see with my own eyes, make sense of with my own words.
Later, when the twins lie sleeping. I get the encyclopedia and open it on page one.
A for Animal.
The word animal comes from the Latin word animalis, meaning ‘to have breath’. . .
NINETEEN
REBEKAH
I’m woken by gunshots. At first I don’t know what they are, though the sound is loud and close. The sky is not yet fully light, and the clouds are already thickening, threatening rain which will surely soon come. I look out of the window, down into the yard, and see Mary Protheroe standing outside the barn holding a torch.
Through the small barn windows is the orange light of lanterns. I can hear the bleating of panicked sheep, and then another blast of a gun. There are voices shouting. Then another blast and a flash which makes me jump.
Mary shouts something and knocks loudly on the door and Micah comes out. He is wearing overalls that are red with blood.
I can’t hear all of what she is saying, but she is pointing at the barn and then at the house. ‘This is madness! I will not starve my own children! I will not—’
She’s answered by a stinging slap that makes me flinch and immediately draws red stripes across her cheek. I drop the curtain. Peter wakes and comes into my room, sleepy. ‘What’s going on?’
‘I don’t know,’ I say.
‘Why is Daddy shouting?’
‘I told you, I don’t know.’
‘Is he cross with us?’
‘No.’
‘I’m hungry.’
‘I know.’
Then there are more gunshots. He furrows his face. ‘What is it?’
I have no answer for him, so just grab hold of him, press his body into mine. He is thin, the bones of him press into my chest. ‘It’s OK,’ I say, even though it’s not. ‘I’m going to make it OK.’
We have a hundred head of sheep and forty goats. The gunshots seem to go on and on, until it gets fully light and the rain starts again, an endless, persistent downpour. Peter falls asleep again in my arms, but I stay awake, watching the weather getting heavier and closer until the clouds are so low and dense I could almost pull them out of the sky.
Downstairs, Mary is in the kitchen raking over the fire, trying to coax the embers back to life, her face still red with the marks of Micah’s hand.
Hannah and Margaret sit at the table discussing how when we are in heaven after the Rapture there will be manna to eat like there was in the days of Moses, which fell from the sky and kept the Israelites alive through their days of exile. Although no one is sure what manna really will taste like, Hannah says it will melt in the mouth like a delicious honeyed wafer, it will keep us full up all day and will make us glow with a special force.
‘Are you sure you are not thinking of Ready Brek, Sister?’ Mary says, arching her eyebrow.
Hannah presses her hands together and looks pained. ‘Sister,’ she says. ‘Sister, we would all have to be deaf and blind not to have witnessed what passed between you and Micah this morning. Would you like us to pray with you?’
Mary stands up and puts her hands on her hips. ‘We may be able to fast, but the boys have no idea why they cannot eat. Would you starve your own children?’
‘If the Lord commanded it. Think of Abraham and Isaac.’
Mary turns up her nose. ‘That story is unnatural,’ she mutters.
I have always thought the same. Father often tells the story of how God commanded Abraham to sacrifice his beloved son, going so far as to build the pyre and trick the child to lie on it before God sent a ram to be sacrificed instead. Isaac, the child, so trusting, followed his father without knowing what intentions Abraham held in the name of God. Father is always using this as an example of true obedience and faithfulness, but I think it’s frightening, horrible.
‘God was only testing him.’
‘Only? Hannah, you have not had the blessing of children so perhaps it is hard for you to see. Would you take your beloved child and be prepared to kill him? Is our God really so bloodthirsty?’
‘Our God is the God of the Bible. It is not for us to judge Him. Such vanity!’ She tuts and her face seems to wither. ‘And I would trust that my God knew better than I, that there was a plan.’
Mary shakes her head. ‘But what kind of God would want to torture me in such a way? I myself would rather die first. Micah may be my husband, but I will not respect him in this madness.’
Her words echo around the kitchen. Hannah shifts in her seat and purses her lips, presses her fingers together into a bridge.
‘Sister, you know that Bevins warned us that there would be demons pulling us away from the truth. The girl has already—’
‘Never mind that! What do you suggest I tell the boys when they come to me hungry? I can’t feed them on prayers!’
‘And that the demons would come in the female form.’ She narrows her eyes. ‘Beware of your words, Mary.’ Hannah’s voice carries the sharp edge of a threat.
‘You even sound like him!’ Mary says. ‘Can’t you think for yourselves?’ She throws a bowl into the sink, which smashes into pieces.
But Hannah doesn’t get a chance to answer, as Father comes into the kitchen with Micah and Jonathan. They are carrying chickens, their necks floppy and broken. Mary makes a strange, strangled noise as they lay their still-warm bodies on the kitchen table.
‘On Monday we will have our last supper. A feast!’ says Father, looking around at us, his eyes glittering. ‘And then a fast to purify. The time is near, Sisters. Let us be ready.’
But then Bevins comes in.
‘What’s this?’ he says, pointing at the chickens. ‘Why are they in the kitchen, and not on the pyre?’
‘I thought . . .’ Father starts. ‘You said . . . that we would have a feast, a last supper . . .’
Bevins shakes his head. ‘No no! You misunderstand me. There will be no feasting! We must prepare, keep our bodies holy even unto the last! Now is the time for fasting, not feasting!’ And he picks up the chickens by the legs. they dangle dead and lifeless from his hand.
‘Oh.’ Father looks unsure, his face reddens. ‘I thought . . .’
Bevins puts a hand on Father’s shoulder. ‘What do we know about thinking? Thinking is sinking! Thinking is of the body, of the flesh. In these last days we do not think, we believe.’
‘Yes, Bevins, I’m sorry. I must have misunderstood.’
‘I think you did.’
He tells us all to close our eyes and leads us in a prayer. I half close my eyes and watch Father. He has his head bowed, his eyes squeezed shut. After Bevins is done we all look at each other as if we’re not sure what is supposed to happen next, and then Hannah is the first to speak, asking him some long and pointless question about what exactly will be the manna that we will eat in heaven.
‘Will it be like wafer, Pastor Bevins, or more like a kind of flatbread?’
‘I can tell you, Hannah, that heaven will be exactly the way God wills it.’
I go over to Father an
d pull on his sleeve, but he just mutters at me and shrugs his arm away. When Father tells the story of the day he saw the light, he tells it as if it was a story from the Bible itself. He was driving his car to work one day when it broke down on a busy road. He managed to push the car to the edge of the road and someone finally stopped and offered help. Except it wasn’t just a someone, it was Mr Bevins, who gave him a lift to work and a leaflet about the Church. And at that meeting Father said he felt the hand of God upon him, and he knew from that moment on that he was where he was meant to be, that he had found his special purpose in life. I wonder sometimes at my special purpose in life and whether it is the same. It seems a shame for the Rapture to come so soon, before I’ve had a chance to find out. I tug again on his coat.
He turns to look at me. ‘What is it, Rebekah?’
Now that he is looking at me with his full attention, I stumble. ‘I-I-I was – I, well . . .’ I am aware of Bevins standing behind me, listening. ‘Are you sure?’ I look at his belt, where the key to the Solitary swings from one of the belt hooks. I wonder if I could just reach out and grab it.
He looks surprised. ‘Sure of what?’
‘That the Rapture is coming?’
His eyes narrow. His faces grows serious and unsmiling. ‘As I take breath, child. It has been revealed in the Scriptures.’ He taps the cover of his Bible. ‘And Bevins has seen it. We can’t argue with that.’
‘But how has it been revealed?’
‘Through prophecy of course. You heard Bevins bearing witness. You read Naomi’s note.’
‘But what if he’s wrong?’ I can feel Bevins’s eyes burning into the back of me. The fire of them turns my face red.
‘He is not wrong.’
‘But –’ How do you know?
Before I can ask, Bevins has pushed me aside to stand next to Father. ‘Are you calling your father a liar?’ he says, staring at me. ‘Child, you know full well that those who will not stand with us stand against us.’
I shake my head. ‘No! I was just asking . . . I am thinking about the twins. The boys are too young for fasting.’
Father rolls his eyes. ‘Have you been talking to Mary? We will take care of it. They will not go hungry.’
He rests his hand on my head and I nod, although I am not reassured; something in me does not believe him, and I am angry that they are so dismissive. As if getting food to eat is a petty concern. When they walk away I realize I have had my fists clenched so tight my nails have dug deep grooves into the palms of my hands.
The afternoon is spent reading the Bible while the men take the bodies of the sheep and the goats and the chickens they have killed and bury them. They have kept alive ten sheep and ten goats for a sacrifice on the night of the Rapture. They begin to dig a trench too, like Elijah’s, but it’s raining too hard and they come and sit inside, the boots we cleaned yesterday now all caked in mud again. We can hear them singing and then saying prayers. The rain will not last, they say; it will blow over by the evening.
‘Perhaps we should start our own singing,’ Hannah says. ‘Who would like to start?’
There is silence in the kitchen. I notice Mary makes a face behind her back.
‘Is there not virtue in our silence, Sister?’ she says, but Hannah ignores her and starts a warbling version of ‘What a Friend We Have in Jesus’. A few of the others join in, but I don’t. I watch the rain pouring down outside. If it carries on like this it will be damp and freezing in the Solitary, and that makes me worried, because I don’t think anyone has been to visit there all day and I doubt Alex has enough blankets.
I don’t want to ask, for fear of making myself look interested. Ruth and Margaret seem to have forgotten that they have been tasked to watch me. They are too busy thinking about the Rapture and the fall of the world of man. They can’t stop talking about it with Hannah, especially the destruction part, I can tell they are pleased to know that all the people that have ever caused them harm will suffer and die. They speculate about what heaven will be like, about the golden clothes and shining haloes and the fact they will get to meet the characters from the Bible again. Margaret is reeling off a list. ‘Moses! I should like to talk to him – and Thomas and Luke!’ As if they might walk into the room at any moment.
I wonder who I should like to meet from the Bible, but I can’t think of anyone, apart from Jesus. And surely if the Rapture does come, then he will be here anyway. I think of all the Bible stories I know, but there are no girls like me in any of them and I wonder if heaven will just be full of old men with long white beards.
I excuse myself to go to the outside toilet, but I can hardly see, the rain is so intense.
Across the other side of the yard I can make out a figure – Micah, I can tell from the slope of his shoulder. He has Job the sheepdog with him. He’s holding him by the collar and is bending down to the dog, speaking to it. I know how he loves that dog. He’s trained it since it was a puppy to round the sheep and come when it is called. But then, in a sudden, terrible instant, he holds the gun to the dog’s head and fires.
I think I must cry out, because immediately he looks up at me and shouts, but all I can see is the limp body of his dog, fallen into an unnatural heap at his feet.
‘What is it, child? You’re like a ghost!’ I bump into Hannah as I fly through the door.
Mary frowns at me. ‘What was that noise?’
‘Micah,’ I say, the blood draining from my face. ‘He shot Job.’
There is a gasp. ‘But he loves that dog!’ Margaret says.
‘Which is doubtless why he did it,’ says Hannah. ‘How much crueller to leave him behind to fend for himself.’
‘Are there dogs in heaven, do you think?’ asks Margaret.
I am distracted for a moment by her idiocy, but then give way to the howl of protest building up in my heart and the floor seems to melt beneath me. ‘But . . .’ I say. ‘But . . .’ They will leave Alex to fend for herself, but not an animal?
Mary grabs my arm. ‘A word,’ she says, pulling me out of the kitchen into the tack room where the dead chickens hang plucked from the ceiling, naked and defenceless. ‘Shush, Rebekah. Shush. Don’t make a fuss.’
‘But why not?’
‘It’s not our place to ask why.’
‘But they’ve killed all the livestock and now Job! And Alex is in the Solitary, in this weather! You know it’s wrong.’
‘I’ve paid for it.’ She touches her cheek.
‘I must see her!’ I say, looking at her pleadingly. ‘We can’t just leave her over there in this weather.’
‘You can’t go,’ she says. ‘Not now. It will be noticed.’
‘I don’t care if it’s noticed!’ I say rashly. ‘She should not be out there tonight, alone in this weather.’
‘What you say is true, but she is probably drier there than we are – the Solitary is safer than most places here. I know. I’ve spent time there. If you want to see her again, you must not be seen to want it.’
Defiance takes hold of me that will not be extinguished with reason. All I can think of is Alex, cold and alone in the raw weather, lost in the night with no comfort. ‘But what has she done wrong?’ I say out loud. ‘She’ll get sick and die!’ The thought that I might not see her again consumes me with a fear that is almost too painful to contemplate. Mary puts her hand on my arm to still me.
‘We’ll find a way. Just not now. You must be obedient, even if it kills your heart to do so. Alex will be OK, you’ll see. But if you go out tonight you will be followed, and if you’re followed you might come to harm, and then I can’t protect you.’
Her words surprise me. ‘Protect me? Why should I need to be protected?’
She tuts and looks at the ceiling as if to ask God Himself for patience. ‘Rebekah, do you trust me?’
‘Yes.’
‘Well, then you must be quiet. For all our sakes.’ She lowers her voice still further. ‘Hannah and Margaret are watching and they do not mean you well.’
‘Yes, but worse than that.’
We do not say his name. To say his name would be to make it real, this fear that we both carry. It would be a heresy, and also a truth, and we are silent because we are afraid.
I nod slowly. ‘Do you think the Rapture is coming on Tuesday?’
Mary bites her lip. ‘I don’t know, Rebekah. Some of us might be grateful for the glory. I watch and pray. So should you.’
‘Micah shot the dog . . .’ I can’t get the image out of my head.
‘For what Micah has done he will have to answer to the Almighty.’
When we walk back into the kitchen, Hannah is there with Bevins. He is flushed and agitated, full of a kind of happiness that is almost manic.
‘Live for the Victory!’ he says, his face shining with sweat. ‘Live for the Victory!’ And he needs to borrow a pan, although he doesn’t say why.
I stare at him. When he looks at me the excitement leaves his face, which becomes set, his eyes like stones. He seems not like the kindly father sent to lead us to the promised land, but a lost man, wandering through a wilderness of his own creation, not leading us anywhere at all.
TWENTY
ALEX
I fell asleep and woke up not knowing where I was. It was so dark that for a moment I thought I’d gone blind. I waved my hand in front of my eyes but all I could feel was air against my face.
Then I heard a sound, like someone clearing their throat.
‘Hello?’
But there was no reply. I listened really hard. I heard it again.
‘Hello?’ I sat upright, pushed myself to the back of the bed, clutching my knees to my chest. There was someone in the room with me, I was sure of it.
‘Who’s there?’
I sat there listening, staring into the dark until my eyes hurt. Nothing. They had come and prayed with me all of last night. Droning on and on while I fell in and out of awareness. You are a sinner; you must repent. On and on and on until I thought I was going to explode. Now I was alone and I couldn’t work out which was worse.